5

August 10, 1897, is bright and warm. Palermo slumbers, its eyes still half shut, the light of dawn bullying its way through

the shutters and doors left ajar.

A servant woman crosses the sequence of salons, parlors, and rooms on the ground floor of the Olivuzza; she's shaking, and

practically stumbles as she turns to look at Giovanna, who's falling behind her, hands clenched over her stomach, back stiff,

and face stony. As she passes the mirrors, they briefly reflect the image of the young fighter who came into this house thirty

years ago, instead of a tired and unhappy old woman.

The servant woman practically rushes into the buffet room and indicates one of the dressers, its doors wide open. "Careful,"

she mutters in consternation. "Look!"

Empty. The dresser is empty.

The silver trays, the pitchers, and the teapots have vanished. The large embossed-silver basin she bought in Naples when her

Vincenzino was still alive is no longer there. The flowers it contained are strewn under the mahogany tables, trampled by

feet that have left muddy prints.

"What else is missing?" Giovanna asks in a frail voice.

The servant puts a hand over her mouth and points at the next room. "Two of those French somethings, the ones you use for holding fruit..." She hesitates, embarrassed and frightened. God forbid Donna Giovanna might think she 's in any way involved.

"The two épergnes ?" Giovanna's voice is shrill. She looks to the ceiling, as though she could see the images of what happened last night on

it. She takes a deep breath, trying to calm her anger. "Where's Nino?" she asks in a steadier tone.

As though summoned by her words, the butler appears at the dining room door. Giovanna blindly trusts this man who worked for

ages in Favignana, in their house near the tonnara , and has been at the Olivuzza for the past four years. She has never needed his calm and his all-seeing eye more than she

does now.

"I'm here, Donna Giovanna. It seems that the French alabaster vases and your son's golden snuff boxes are also missing." He

clears his throat. "And that's not all. They've also taken Signorina Giovannuzza's toys. There are footprints all the way

down the corridor."

Giovanna feels a tightening in her chest.

The child.

Their bedroom, their privacy, has been violated. A burglary in Casa Florio.

Contempt . An insult to their power. Thieves in her home. Thieves taking her things, the things she has collected, chosen, looked after.

Not just objects but memories, like those two antique alabaster vases she and her beloved Ignazio bought in Paris from a dealer

on Place des Vosges.

How dare they? Giovanna looks around and an unpleasant sensation runs through her, one that goes beyond fear. Beyond contempt.

Nausea.

She looks at the muddy footprints— filthy feet , she thinks with disdain—at the finger smears on the polished mahogany, at the trampled flowers. It's as if these marks defile her own body and clothes.

"Clean everything up," she orders the servant woman. "All of it!" she adds more loudly, not bothering to conceal her rage.

"And you, Nino, make a detailed inventory of all that's missing. Get the servant women to help you. I need to know what these

wretches have stolen."

She turns on her heels and marches out of the room and down the steps to the garden. The fresh air brings her no relief. On

the contrary. She discovers more muddy footprints on the steps, a sign that the burglars must have entered and left here.

She should call Ignazio, but he's still asleep. He recently returned from a cruise on the Aegean, aboard his new yacht the

Aegusa , the ancient name for Favignana. A well-deserved vacation: a year ago, the creation of the Anglo-Sicilian Sulfur Company,

which involved both British and French entrepreneurs, succeeded thanks to Ignazio's intervention and is now yielding a good

profit. Then, more recently, Nathaniel Rothschild came to Palermo on his yacht, Veglia , and there followed an uninterrupted series of receptions, visits, tours of the city, and work meetings. When the illustrious

guest finally departed, Ignazio suggested this cruise to the whole family, but she didn't feel like leaving Palermo, telling

herself that the children should enjoy themselves without an elderly woman weighing them down. So she stayed here, with only

Donna Ciccia and her embroidery for company.

Never before has she been afraid of staying at the Olivuzza on her own. Never in all these years.

She walks into the green salon and pauses in the middle of this room where she has spent so many peaceful moments. She wanders amid the furniture, strokes her husband's photographs, picks up a few items, as if to reassure herself that they are still here, then looks at her hands. The skin is flecked by age spots, her fingers dry and contracted. She looks up: on a table stand her workbasket, the missal, the ivory crucifix, the candles in their silver holders, and the vermeil matchbox. In the corner display cabinet, there are a few porcelain statuettes. On the small table next to the couch, she spots the crystal vase with fresh flowers and the photographs of her Vincenzino and Ignazio in their silver frames. Everything looks intact.

It is a world in which she has never felt the slightest unease. The Florio name has always been powerful and feared, always

enough to defend her.

But now everything has been trampled, just like the flowers upstairs.

That is what truly frightens her most.

***

After waking Ignazio, Giovanna goes into her daughter-in-law's bedroom. Franca abruptly lifts her head. Diodata has informed

her what happened, and she is unable to conceal her fear. After helping her mistress into her robe, Diodata leaves, muttering

insults at "those undignified rogues with no God or family."

There is a sea of jewels on the bed. Franca has emptied the gold mesh bag where she keeps them to account for anything missing.

Many are gifts from Ignazio: bracelets, rings, gold and platinum necklaces with diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, and many, many

pearls gleaming in the morning light. Giovannuzza, who has long black hair and green eyes, is sitting on the bed, still in

her nightdress, playing, slipping on rings that are too large for her fingers and slide off into the sheets.

"They haven't touched anything of mine," Franca says, hugging her daughter. "They've only taken the tin toys from—from her room," she adds, unable to utter the child's name. "Good God! What if she'd ended up like Audrey Whitaker..."

Giovanna lets her eyes wander over the floor decorated with rose petals. She never liked this room but has always thought

it perfect for Franca. "But she didn't," she replies flatly.

She looks straight at her, her eyes more eloquent than words.

Franca lets go of her daughter. "Ignazio won't call the police, will he?"

Giovanna shakes her head. " Chisti 'un sunnu cose di sbirri —this is not police business."

The police can't be trusted: they're all foreigners and know nothing of Palermo. They barge into your home, speaking in that

singsong accent of theirs, pose irrelevant questions, and frame victims as culprits. Some things can be dealt with quickly

and without unnecessary escalation. "He's already talking with Noto. We pay him, and handsomely at that." Her voice is hoarse,

like stone against stone. The anger she feels is there, seething beneath her words, barely concealed by the stern tone. "We

give him money, even got him a job, and what does he do?"

***

"How is that possible?" Ignazio shouts furiously, banging his fist on the desk. The inkwell clinks, the pens roll. Then he

drops his voice and his anger turns into a lash. "We pay you—you and your brother—to watch, and not exactly pennies...

and now I discover that my home has been burglarized?"

Hair slicked back, his face angular, Francesco Noto torments the brim of his hat. He looks more uneasy than contrite, possibly even annoyed: he isn't used to being treated like this. "Don Ignazio, it pains me to hear you speak this way. I'd never have thought that—"

"But it was precisely your duty to prevent these dogs from despoiling my home, taking my things and my mother's. They even

broke into my picciridda 's room! What will they do next time? Kidnap her or my brother? If you don't feel capable of fixing this, just say so. The

world is full of people I could use instead of you."

The look in the man's deep-set eyes becomes a glare. A wary expression appears beneath his bushy eyebrows. "You'd better watch

what you say, Don Ignazio. We have always shown you respect."

Ignazio does not appear to have picked up on Noto's intimations, or else deliberately ignores them. "Respect is given to those

who give it to you. You know better than I that it's measured in actions, Don Ciccio. Where were you both?"

The man hesitates before replying. It isn't an embarrassed silence but rather the silence of someone deciding what to say

and how. "Somebody has offended you because of our shortcomings, and for that I apologize. My brother and I will make sure

everything you've lost is returned to you, to the last pin. A gentleman like yourself can't have burglars upsetting your wife

and your mother, who's a saint." He raises his eyes only slightly but nails Ignazio with his look. "We will make sure nobody

bothers you or your family again."

To Ignazio, these words douse the fire, ringing of promise. His breathing, shallow from anger, relaxes. "I truly hope so,

Signor Noto."

Signor Noto and not Don Ciccio. An unequivocal sign.

Francesco Noto squints slightly. "Consider it done. Don't worry."

***

A cough, then another.

"I don't like it." Giovanna sighs, fingering her beads. She usually recites the rosary with Donna Ciccia, but she's on her

own today because her friend is bedridden. For some time now she has suffered pains, severe at times, in her legs.

Sitting on a bench, Giovannuzza is playing with Fanny, her favorite china doll—a present from Aunt Giulia—in the gentle light

of a mild October day. She's thin and pale, and is often pestered by an irritating cough. The long days spent by the sea in

Favignana at first, then the tour across the Aegean, have not helped her. Giovanna is worried.

She would like to mention it to Franca again and ask her to do something. Perhaps, she thinks, Giovannuzza should repeat the

treatment with cluster pine essence tablets, which they had ordered straight from Paris, and seemed to bring some relief.

Of course, they had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get Giovannuzza to swallow them: she had rebelled, kept her mouth

firmly closed, and had once even vomited over the nanny's skirt.

But Franca has gone out to the dressmaker's with Giulia Trigona, and she heard her say that afterward they would be having

lunch at Palazzo Butera with Giulia's daughter. She's going to have to wait until the afternoon to speak with her. And then

she'll have to endure being dismissed as an overly anxious old woman.

Maybe I'd better take Giovannuzza back indoors , she thinks, but doesn't have the heart to do so. It's a gentle, fragrant day, the scent of the yucca flowers mingling with

the jasmine that still blooms along the outside wall of the Olivuzza. And the sunshine is good for both of them , she thinks, stroking the child's face.

Giovannuzza coughs a few more times but pauses only briefly before returning to dressing Fanny with the miniature clothes her mother gave her, clothes identical to her own.

Not far from them, Vincenzino is trying to climb onto his new velocipede, helped by a manservant. When he finally succeeds,

he laughs happily.

Sometimes Giovanna sees in him the other Vincenzino, the firstborn who for the past eighteen years has been asleep next to his father and grandfather in the chapel

of the Santa Maria di Gesù Cemetery.

She misses him. She misses all her departed. During this period when the light takes on the color of honey and the air is

filled with garden smells, she thinks she can almost hear their voices carried on the wind: her mother, who died over twenty-five

years ago, stiffened by illness; her son, whose voice did not have time to deepen as boys' voices do when they become adults;

Ignazio, with his calm, self-assured voice.

It's his voice she misses most of all. She misses his warmth, his hands, his gestures. At times, she can still feel his eyes

on her and hear his laughter. She has kept his clothes in an attic at the Olivuzza and occasionally goes there, opens the

trunks, strokes the fabrics, smells them, and searches for a trace or a sign of him. The memory of him, though, like the fabrics,

has faded.

Six years have passed since he died. Years of grieving during which Giovanna has felt her heart wither and turn into a piece

of parchment in her rib cage. Love stopped hurting her only after it was transformed into a memory, belonging only to her.

It's unfair , she thinks, taking a handkerchief from her sleeve. He should be here with me, with all of us.

If he were still living, Ignazio would now be fifty-nine: a perfect age to still rule Casa Florio, but also to at least partly shed some responsibilities and enjoy some peace and quiet with her. Ignazziddu would have had the chance to gain experience at his side, to learn, to... grow up. She sighs. Her son is twenty-nine, but in many ways he's as impulsive and immature as a boy.

There's a pitter-patter of small feet. Giovanna looks up. There stands Giovannuzza, her granddaughter, eyes as green as her

mother's, only gentler and more innocent.

"What are you doing, Oma ?" she asks.

Behind her, the German nanny is picking up the toys. It was Franca who wanted her; Giovanna would have preferred an English

nanny.

"I'm praying," she replies, lifting the rosary beads.

"Why?"

"Sometimes to pray is to remember. It's the only way to keep near those you loved the most, those no longer here."

Giovannuzza looks at her inquisitively. She doesn't understand but with an ordinary child's intuition senses that her grandmother

is sad, very sad. She takes her hand. "But I'm here, so you don't have to remember me. Kommst du ?"

She nods. "I'm coming, sweetheart." Then she frees her hand from her granddaughter's and says, "You go ahead and call Vincenzino."

The little girl runs off, holding Fanny tight to her chest, loudly calling the uncle who is only ten years her senior.

Giovanna looks up at the house. Following Ignazio's death, the Olivuzza seemed huge to her, as though his absence had rendered

its vast rooms pointless. Only with time has she learned to live within them, or at least not to be crushed by them. Her eyes

run across the fa?ade and linger on the window of her husband's bedroom.

She glimpses it in the blink of an eye. A shadow .

She instinctively crosses herself, then looks away and starts off walking, head down. Alone.

As usual, her ghosts follow.

***

Concern for her granddaughter keeps Giovanna awake days later. She wanders through the rooms of the Olivuzza in her robe and

shawl, cradling her unfailing rosary beads, eyes filled with sadness. She now sleeps little, as old people do, and her rest

is fitful, tormented by worries and memories.

From the kitchens, she hears the clinking of dishes and the chatter of maids preparing to clean the rooms. Despite her protests—"That

city's air won't be good for her, not to mention the dampness..."—Franca has insisted on taking Giovannuzza to Venice with

her. Ignazio is in Rome on business, with Vincenzo. He said it has something to do with taxes.

Giovanna slowly heads to the kitchens: she's expecting a group of noblewomen for tea today. She wants to enlist them in various

charitable ventures, her embroidery school in particular, and has decided to ask Monsù to make Belgian wafers with gooseberry jam, possibly with English-style focaccias and bread rolls with butter and orange

marmalade.

But something suddenly catches her eyes and forces her to stop. She retraces her steps, looks around, and blinks.

The alabaster vases she and her husband bought in Paris, and which were stolen early in August, are there in front of her,

on the shelf where she placed them twenty years ago.

Giovanna hesitates, confused, frightened even. Then she goes closer and touches them.

There is no doubt about it. They are real. They're her vases.

She's suddenly overwhelmed by a kind of frenzy. She runs across the checkered floor, the parquet of the ballroom, to the buffet room. She opens dressers, cabinets, and cupboards, throwing doors and drawers open. She touches the silverware in disbelief: it's shiny and very clean. She takes a coffeepot, turns it upside down, and, her lips quivering, seeks the mark of Antonio Alvino, the Neapolitan silversmith. Here it is, unmistakable. She closes the dresser again slowly, nodding to herself.

The last room is Giovannuzza's. On the floor, in the basket, are the child's tin toys.

Everything that was stolen is back in its place.

Francesco Noto has demanded respect.

Giovanna picks up the bell to call Nino but puts it back down immediately. It's pointless , she thinks. None of the servants will say anything. They'll only be relieved that it's all been sorted out.

The excitement has been violent; she needs some fresh air. But she only takes a few steps down the garden alley before she

sees a man standing under a palm tree. It's the head gardener, and he's obviously waiting for her.

Francesco Noto removes his hat and gives a little bow. "Donna Giovanna, assabbinirìca ..."

She nods. "I must thank you for myself and on behalf of my family, Don Francesco," she says, going to him. The hem of her

black robe brushes against the man's dusty shoes.

"I'm glad." He doesn't look into her face; his eyes seem to be drifting around the garden, where his brother Pietro, the doorkeeper,

must be. "It was two men from the village, two coachmen. They ask you to forgive them for their slight."

"Who? Their names."

"Vincenzo Lo Porto and Giuseppe Caruso. We've removed them from the Olivuzza."

Giovanna nods again. That is sufficient for her.

What she doesn't know is how the issue was sorted. She has no idea that Lo Porto's and Caruso's families are desperately looking for them, because although

they have been dismissed from the Olivuzza, they haven't gone to America or Tunisia, as some people said.

Everybody in the district knows it. You can't go against the Noto brothers, embarrass them in front of the Florios, and think

you'll get away with it.

Of course, the Notos, too, did some foolish things, not least asking Pip's older brother, Joss Whitaker, for a gift, and then

not sharing it with Lo Porto and Caruso, their friends.

And that's no way to treat friends.

Some say that the two coachmen slighted the Florios to even things out with the Notos. Others, that they wanted to undermine

the Notos. There are so many rumors...

Except that the Notos couldn't tolerate that kind of slight. No, Giovanna doesn't know about these things, nor does she want

to.

She does find out by the end of November, as she's about to climb into the carriage that will take her to the convent of the

Sisters of Charity for the Thirteen-Day Novena in honor of Saint Lucy. Accompanied by an increasingly stooped and slow Donna

Ciccia, a valet is helping her into the carriage when two women approach her, wrapped in dark shawls that shield them from

the tramontana.

"Donna Giovanna!" the younger woman cries. "Signora, you must hear us out!" Her hair is gathered in a severe bun and she is

wearing humble but clean clothes. The skin over her cheekbones is taut and she has large, hungry eyes, dark with grief. "You

owe it to us," she says, clinging to the carriage door.

Taken by surprise, Giovanna takes a step back. " Chi vuliti di mia? Cu 'site? Who are you? What do you want from me?" she asks curtly.

"We're the wives of Giuseppe Caruso and Vincenzo Lo Porto," the other woman replies. She looks the same age as Giovanna but

is actually much younger: sorrow and shame have suddenly aged her. She's wearing a dress that may not even be hers, hanging

loose and short. "Look at us, Donna Giovanna. Look at us: we're women and mothers just like you. We have children but no one to support us."

Giovanna becomes stone-faced. "You come to ask me for money because you have to raise your hungry children? It's your husbands

you should be angry with, it's them you should ask. They should have considered this before breaking into my house to steal!

Instead, they've fled like cowards."

Vincenzo Lo Porto's wife comes closer. "My husband hasn't gone anywhere," she hisses, her eyes red from crying. "I've nowhere

to light a candle or lay a flower. Thanks to you, I've been left without a husband."

Giovanna freezes. She feels Donna Ciccia stiffen behind her, hears her labored breathing.

She looks at Giuseppe Caruso's wife, who's holding her hands tight over her belly. The woman nods. "Even my father-in-law

knows: he's asked for justice; he said he'd go all the way to Rome if they didn't tell him what happened to his son. And they

left a murdered dog outside our front door." She takes Giovanna's wrist and squeezes it. "Now do you understand?" she whispers

in despair.

"There were others who wanted to take a lot more than a handful of silverware from you, you know?" Lo Porto's wife's face

is now a hand's breadth away from hers. "That they wanted to kidnap your son or your granddaughter? It's already happened

to other people, you know..."

This is too much for Giovanna. She takes a step back and wriggles free, practically shoving her away. "Let go of me," she commands. At that moment, the coachman grabs the woman by the arms and pulls her back. Giovanna takes advantage of this to get into the carriage, although the other woman tries to yank her out. Donna Ciccia slaps the woman's hand.

"Let's go," Giovanna orders, breathless, her heart beating fast. She puts a hand on her chest. "Go, let's go!" she says again,

more loudly, while the two women scream, kick and punch the door.

At last, the carriage takes off and their cries are drowned out by the sound of the wheels on the cobblestones and Donna Ciccia's

labored breathing.

Giovanna can barely speak and clasps her black-gloved hands.

"Did you know this?" Donna Ciccia asks.

Giovanna swallows air and seeks comfort in a hasty Hail Mary but fails. A lump of guilt and nausea tightens her stomach. "No."

"You saw, didn't you? Their clothes."

She nods just once, her eyes focusing on the window without seeing.

Black. The two women were in mourning. Like widows.

And they officially become widows a few weeks later, when their husbands' bodies are discovered in a pothole in a storehouse

just outside the city.

They were murdered a few days after the burglary. They never left Palermo.

This business reaches the ears of a police commissioner who transfers to Palermo from the north a year later. An inflexible

man accustomed to annihilating his enemies, the way he did years earlier when he arrested two hundred members of Fratellanza

di Favara, a criminal organization responsible for a long string of murders.

His mission, as entrusted by the government, is to put an end to the Mafia, the criminal organization everybody is talking about and that seems to evade all laws. In addition, he will have to plunge his hands into the mud puddle where political power and crime overlap before the whole system is compromised. A system where the criminals are at the service of senators, aristocrats, and prominent figures "who protect and defend them so that they, in turn, can be protected and defended by them," as the commissioner writes in his extensive report. Discovering that the Florios were burglarized, he tries to question Giovanna but to no avail. He tries to speak to the Whitakers and shed light on Audrey's kidnapping and extortion but receives only silence in return.

He comes to understand many things, this man with a square jaw and a blond beard, named Ermanno Sangiorgi. For instance, he

begins to understand the organization: the system of families, the heads of the districts, the picciotti , and the oath of loyalty... A structure that will remain practically unchanged nearly a hundred years later in the statements

of Tommaso Buscetta, the Boss of Two Worlds. These statements were given first before Giovanni Falcone during a secret interrogation

that would last six months, then at the first true Mafia trial, which will drag on for six years, from 1986 to 1992. A structure

responsible for the attacks that would claim the lives of Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, respectively four and six months after

the end of the trial.

Yes, Ermanno Sangiorgi will understand many things about the Mafia—but succeed in proving very few.